In a typical local area network, a parallel cable or crossover cable is generally used to interconnect a number of network apparatuses, for example, hubs, switches, repeaters or network cards, etc.
As depicted in FIG. 1, if it is desirous to interconnect two network interface cards (NIC) crisscross, a crossover cable must be employed to allow the transmitter 12 and the receiver 14 of a network interface card to respectively connect to the receiver 24 and the transmitter 22 of another network interface card, so as to form a valid network connection. On the other hand, if it is desirous to connect a network interface card to a switch, a parallel cable must be employed to assure the validity of connection polarities. If it is desirous to interconnect network apparatuses, one has to choose proper network cable to bring them to a correct connection polarity. However, it is quite a torment to a network user.
Therefore, if two network apparatuses in a local area network need to be interconnected crisscross, that is, the polarities of the transmit pair and the receive pair are needed to be exchanged, it is generally accomplished by a manual MDIX (medium-dependent interface crossover) switch. It indicates the manual switching of the transmission/reception polarity on the connector can be achieved by a user to manually push a button.
If two network apparatuses are of different data transmission rates, for instance, those in 10 Base-T (10 MHz), 100 Base-T (100 MHz) and 1000 Base-T (GHz) networks that transmits data with different data transmission rates, it is unlikely to automatically configure connection polarities through the use of prior connection polarity configuration technique.
Besides, the so-called auto-negotiation capability enables different interconnected network apparatuses to work under an optimized operating mode, including full-duplex, half-duplex and so on. However, if the network apparatuses are interconnected with incorrect polarity, it is unable to bring the auto-negotiation mechanism into full play.
It is therefore a major object of the present invention to provide a universal network apparatus capable of automatically configuring connection polarities in a network and the operating method thereof.